Liz's open legs approach adds to Tsvangirai's woes

Fate has not completed its work with Morgan Tsvangirai Tsvangirai. The loss of the election does not seem to be the end of his misfortune. It seems his open-zip approach has met its match with his young wife adopting her own open-legs approach.

Troubling revelations that his young wife has been cavorting with a married man and is facing a lawsuit by the man's wife has been further testament to Tsvangirai's lack of judgment. A reader, commenting on the new episode in Tsvangirai's troubled love life aptly captured the issues:

"How does an aspiring state president marry a woman who has FOUR children with several men without checking her background? And to imagine she has a matter pending at the High Court (for adultery, to put it crudely); and a whole Prime Minister with a coterie of aides and state resources fails to pick this up boggles the mind!"

This lack of judgment has characterised Tsvangirai's time in politics. Only a few days ago Douglas Mwonzora appeared on television arguing that they knew the court action would not succeed due to a hostile bench. However, they would carry on just to show how corrupt the system was.

On Friday, the same people withdrew their application on the grounds that they would not get a fair hearing. This kind of mindless vacillation is hardly surprising coming from Tsvangirai.

All is not lost for Tsvangirai. He can redeem himself if he quickly wakes up to the dynamics that are at play. The first thing Tsvangirai must realise is that the West does not have his interests at heart nor those of his people.

They just want to use him. Tsvangirai simply needs to look at the Wikileaks cables and the decidedly ungenerous evaluation his Western handlers gave him in those private cables. The pinks are masters of manipulation. In public they smiled cheerfully and called him a Mandela.

Tsvangirai must begin by taking the side of Zimbabwe in the bilateral dispute with Britain. Over the past 14 years Tsvangirai has been unable to state that Britain is responsible for paying compensation to the evicted white farmers. Tsvangirai could not say this because he was a puppet of the British.

If Tsvangirai is a serious politician with the interests of Zimbabweans at heart he cannot expect our poor people to be taxed to compensate white British farmers.

I doubt Tsvangirai can summon the courage to state this truth. His fear is that once he takes the side of the Zimbabwean people he will immediately extinguish his usefulness to the British.

The same is true as regards sanctions. The sanctions imposed on this country continue to find justification because Morgan Tsvangirai legitimised them.

If Tsvangirai wants to become truly great he will fight for the removal of those sanctions. His position must be unequivocal.

He is the only person who can completely strip the sanctions regime of any legitimacy. During Tendai Biti's tenure as Finance Minister he quickly learnt of the devastating effect of these sanctions.

Tsvangirai initially supported indigenisation before being brought to order by his handlers. There is video footage of him fully supporting the policy before he abruptly changed his position without explanation. Tsvangirai must cut off the puppet strings holding him back.

Instead of enunciating policy positions that are favourable to British capitalists he must instead stand for truth.  He has been down this road and it has never ended well for him. During the land reform he was used by pink Rhodies to fight a good policy.

He lost that fight as well as the 275 000 households that were resettled.  If Tsvangirai continues to allow himself to be used to fight indigenisation he is going to lose more support. Zanu-PF is not going to stop indigenising the economy and as time passes the benefits are going to become more apparent.

Tsvangirai risks being recorded in history as the witless black puppet that was used to fight land reform, to call for sanctions and to fight indigenisation.

All these positions were not his own. His British handlers were simply using him. Tsvangirai can change that narration or he can dig his grave still deeper.